The present invention relates to musical instrument strings.
It is well known that musical strings for particular types of instruments, such as a violin, require certain physical properties for proper operation, sound, durability and pitch maintenance. Commonly, instrument strings comprise a central core surrounded by one or more layers of winding. Common core materials include metals such as steel, synthetic fibers like nylon, Kevlar® and gut. Gut core strings exhibit somewhat unique properties not easily emulated by synthetic and metal core strings, and are often considered by musicians as “premium” violin strings.
Synthetic cores often comprise a plurality of individual thin fibers (i.e., multifilament), rather than a single larger central fiber. Achieving the desired properties and performance with a multifilament synthetic core typically requires tight winding of metal, such as for example steel, copper or nickel, over the core. In many known violin strings with a multifilament synthetic core, at least two successive layers of metal winding are needed to achieve the requisite torsional stiffness in the string. Conversely, strings with a gut core typically require only a single metal winding to achieve desired properties, including acceptable torsional stiffness. Many known windings may achieve the objective of improving torsional stiffness, but also carry the drawback of adding substantial bending stiffness to the string.
It would thus be desirable to have a musical instrument string with substantially increased torsional stiffness without a corresponding increase in bending stiffness. It would also be desirable to have a musical instrument string with a non-gut core that emulates the characteristics of a gut core string.